What I don’t understand about Wikileaks

The press has gone wild over this Afghanistan war news: the deaths, the coverups, the slaughter, the screw ups, the lies, etc. etc. I haven’t read every bit of news on this but it seems pretty much like a fleshing out and summary of what has appeared on antiwar.com every day for many years. I’m not surprised at all. What am I missing here? Is it merely a repackaging of what the alternative press – and buried within the mainstream press – has long reported or is there something completely new and shocking? In wartime, I tend to become accustom to a vast gulf between reality reported in the alternative press and the conventional wisdom. For that matter, it is true with economic news too. Maybe I’m jaded, but I’m having a hard time dropping the jaw in amazement.